The Director's Chair Network

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hello and welcome And this is a show that I am really really excited about because we're switching things up a
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little bit First of all let me welcome to the show Brian Sword fellow podcaster
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Welcome Brian Hey Craig Thanks for having me on It's a thrill to be here Oh you got it So this is a first for the
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show in the sense that I'm sitting down and podcasting with somebody I've never podcasted with before So that's kind of
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uh cool And we're going to switch things up a little bit We're going to be talking about two different movies today
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centered around a single performer So we're going to be talking about 1983 Scarface and
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1993's Caro's Way both featuring Al Pacino So Brian before we get too into
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things kind of set the table for us in terms of your Deal experience Is it centered
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around these two Pacino movies or is it a greater appreciation of Dama as a filmmaker
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it started with these two movies especially Caro's Way was my
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initial start That was I had just gotten into Alpuccino movies and this was the
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first one I saw in the theater Okay You know and then you know I got the poster and had it up and I was you know pretty
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I'm pretty obsessive guy So that began my my my Pacino obsession and then I
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went back and watched everything and became a much bigger film nerd and then
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got into DeAlma ended up going to film school and and you know produced a film
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and was worked corporate video forever But DeAlma to me is one of my all-time
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favorite directors Pacino is one of my favorite actors So these two films mean a lot to me Oh that's excellent Yeah
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it's amazing Brian I've been sort of really really focused uh on the diploma
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end of things for the last couple months as I've started to think about this podcast and I mean this is a a diploma
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podcast so there's no shock here but I mean it continually amazes me the career
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that the Palama was able to have um and he wasn't always successful but I mean
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gosh darn it if I can't make a claim on this podcast that he really is America's greatest director I mean there's other
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directors that have been more successful but man nobody else has jumped in genres and mastered genres the way that Deama
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did That's the key is that he never made the same film twice In fact you know I
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think he was hesitant to even do Carto because he was afraid it was too close to Scarface Obviously it was very
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different even though you could certainly tell it's the same director when you go scene by scene and you see the way he constructs scenes you know
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he's got his own style but he could do anything and pull it off in terms of
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style You know he's not pigeonholed into one particular thing Yeah It It's amazing to me and it it's so funny if
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you just skim his filmography and you look at like okay Phantom of the Paradise which is like a midnight movie
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before Rocky Horror Picture Show you know a rock and roll musical And then that you know a couple years later he
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makes Carrie which is one of the greatest horror films of all time And then he makes you know this thriller
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like Blowout And then he just you know later in his career makes a straightup action film like Mission Impossible
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which a film like Mission Impossible might seem weird but it it kind of makes
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sense to me that like Tom Cruz and Paula Wagner would be like "Yeah this guy has made some of the best action sequences
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within non-action movies Why don't we let him just make an action movie exactly And when you really look at his
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scenes like he has pre-planned everything He knows every shot before
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he's done it He's not making it up on the fly which is why his action scenes are always so incredible Or his you know
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one take wonders like super long shots that are just like how did you you know
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plan that out just it's like ballet almost It's like a dance Yeah And we talked about that in the Snake Eyes
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episode that you know just the technical part of putting that whole sequence together without all the actors having
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to do what they have to do But one thing I think that these two scenes we're going to talk about illustrate is the
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Palama's ability as a filmmaker to lay out the geography of a location Mhm There's so
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many action movies and and I think a lot of times action movies are are built in the editing room and things like that
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where you don't know what the f is going on where people are in relation to each other and a lot of other you know quick
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cuts and things like that where you fake the action But the the impressive thing about these two sequences and dep in
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general is the geography is always there There's no guessing as to where somebody
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is in relation to somebody else Absolutely And a lot of times you get a standard wide establishing shot for most
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directors give you the lay of the land and so you get a sense of the geography But with with Deal Palma he'll do like a
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crane shot that swoops around and gives you everything so you know when the action starts who's who and what's what
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It's never just a simple locked off shot to to establish the geography of the scene You know he builds it into the
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perform what the actors are doing and gives the viewer a sense of what the scene is and where it is Yeah Yeah And
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and the one thing I really really enjoy about Deal Palma is how cinematic he is
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And I think there's a lot of approaches to film making where you try not to have
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it feel or look like a movie But the the thing I love about Depal is he's like "Yeah you're watching a movie and you're
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watching my movie." Yep And there's no wasted opportunity You'll watch a scene
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and you'll be like some little thing happens and oh look there's a huge camera little swirl to pick it up where
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it didn't have to be but it just makes it feel so cinematic He he never wastes an opportunity to be cinematic ever He
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just doesn't do it Yeah And these two scenes are going to showcase that But before we get into that I want to talk a
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little bit about DAMA and Pacino and Deama and actors in general because I
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think a lot of times when people focus on a director's visual style their relationship to their actors
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get a little lost And one thing is how many times Deama worked with the same
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actors um you know as you know he famously Nancy Allen was in several of
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his movies and we know they were married Pacino was in two of his movies He did several movies with Dairo early in his
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career Uh Dennis Fron who just anytime he pops up uh John Lithggo So what do
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you think it is about Dealma and his repeated use of actors do you think
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that's sort of another sort of underappreciated tool in his tool belt i
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think so I think there's a few things going on here I think a lot of times an extremely visual
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director will do it at the sacrifice of the performance because it's about getting this super complicated shot and
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the Palma could easily fall into that because of the complexity of what he does But I don't think he does I think
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he manages to balance the complicated shot setup with working with the actor
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to get the best performances because it's very rare to be a bad performance in a diploma film He he casts well which
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is a good chunk of it is just choosing who to work with but he he pulls out incredible performances I suspect that
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the recurring use of actors I because he's so complicated it may not be for
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every actor so he probably finds the ones that enjoy the more complex stuff that can also perform under those
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conditions and then uses them over and over again when he can Yeah And and
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that's sort of how I want to dovetail with into Pacino because it's so funny Brian I don't know in in your world uh
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if this debate was ever raging or not but there was you know probably when I
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was really first getting passionate about films in the you know the mid '9s there would be the debate about who the
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greatest American living actor was you know Pacino or Dairo And for the longest time I was like oh it's clearly Dairo
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But then you go back and you start peeling the onion of Alpuccino's career and you see amazing performance after
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amazing performance I mean just the two the first two Godfathers alone Uh and then you watch something like Dog Day
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Afternoon which is just like a performance that I can't imagine many
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other actors pulling off And the the intensity that Pacino has
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without getting too intense um is is just
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remarkable And I mean we could argue that later in his career he kind of leaned into that intensity Mhm But if
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you look at those early performances it's really remarkable to see the work that he did and how committed he was to
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things though I can't imagine that Dairo or that Pacino wasn't just thrilled to
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team up with Dealma for Scarface which is just such a an audacious movie And I
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mean you know he's playing a a Cuban immigrant Do you do you want to talk a little bit about Pacino a little bit
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more before we get into the particular scenes sure Like yeah Pacino is my
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favorite actor of all time and he had those two kind of major eras had the 70s
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eras and the '90s era those were his two kind of massive peaks And I find with him using the Godfather
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as a great example of the range of where that character started with which was
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completely believable as the kind of good guy of the family who doesn't want to be involved and the end of Godfather
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2 where is so extremely different yet completely believable like you saw the
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darkness in him and you believed it That range of that one character in two films
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is massive and very few people could pull that off in my opinion
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And we talk about Dairo and he was another one of my favorite actors But oh
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boy I could not believe Dairo in the beginning of Godfather one as Michael There's no way I don't think he could
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pull off that believably You know he could pull off the second half no problem you know of of Godfather 2 So
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I've always leaned into Pacino as my favorite It's hard to say better but my
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favorite over Dairo and the range of work that he did in the 70s and the '9s
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you know and yeah definitely by the end of the 90s well Son of a Woman and the end of the ' 90s he really leaned into
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overthe-top but man it's I can't help but have a big grin on my face when I watch him do it You know what I mean so
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like I'm not going to give him an Oscar for it even though they did Yeah But man when he starts chewing scenery you know
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I'm like I don't care And that's part of the problem They gave him the Oscar But then you also think of uh movies like
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The Devil's Advocate which is just such a fun movie to watch because of Pacino and how he's just chewing it up Mhm But
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then also of heat too Oh I was going to say Heat is just like um probably like
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peak you know hammy Pacino but also um just you know it's wrapped up in just
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another you know a masterpiece And it's it's amazing to see how many masterpieces Oh yeah Pacino's been
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involved with So let's jump into things and we're going to look at a sequence from 1983
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Scarface It was a DealMama's 14th film and he was coming off of Blowout which
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is just you know considered one of DAPA's greatest and you know rightfully
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so But Scarface has a long and storied history Um it didn't start out as a DAMA
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project It's got a script that's co-written by Oliver Stone And
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it's it's amazing because it's one of those films I mean now every movie
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nowadays seems to be over 2 and 1/2 hours long It's just accepted But Scarface is over 2 and 1/2 hours long at
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a time when films really had to earn that run time Mhm And I think everybody
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knows Scarface It's probably one of his most infamous movies one of Pacino and
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and Deal's most infamous movies It's a loose remake of the 1930s film Scarface and it follows sort
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of the rise and fall of a a Cuban immigrant who becomes a drug kingpin Before we get into the scene do
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you want to talk about Scarface a little bit sure Scarface is boy that's a lot of movie
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Um you know it's interesting You know the myth is that it was Aluccino's idea
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to do it which is similar to Kudo's way but it was Aluccino's idea to remake it
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He went to his producer and and they're the ones that started putting it together and got Oliver Stone on board
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to start writing it And that off the bat is interesting you know to have the lead actor be the one to be like "No I think
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there's a movie here a modern version of this story." I know De Palma wasn't the
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original director in mind but I think it was Cindy Lumett right it was Cindy
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that's right which makes a lot of sense because Picino's worked with him before obviously Dog Day Afternoon so that
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makes a ton of sense Hawaii would go to him and in theory you think Sydney Lame
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sure you know Scarface but it's certainly an interesting
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it's an interesting movie and also I like the fact that it's interesting the fact that it was not a hit when it came out we we look at it now Like you you
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can't walk down the street without seeing somebody in a t-shirt for Scarface You know it's such a classic
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cult massive film but it wasn't in 1983 It barely made its money back Yeah You
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know you know so it took a while for that one to build and I don't know it took maybe 10 years for it to start
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becoming a bit of a classic So it's not your normal classic hit to look back
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upon I think Yeah It's funny I I read a quote recently from Steven Bower who
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said uh when they were making the film they knew they were doing something special and as they led up to the release
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Pacino sort of said to him he's like "Listen don't read the reviews and don't
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worry about the box office Just know that we made a great film." And I I
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think that's probably how Pacino has functioned and maintained his career is not getting caught up in worrying about
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what the critics say or or what your box office says I mean ultimately box office is going to dictate the the projects
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you're able to make but you shouldn't let that drive sort of how you're doing the work But I I thought that was
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interesting And then eventually like a lot of movies people caught up to it And
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Pacino hadn't had a hit in a while You know when this came out he wasn't at peak pacino here Yeah You know like you
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look back at what author author which is not a bad little movie Yeah Yeah Cruising was before which which bombed
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and Justice for All I think that may be another one that people look back on more fondly I don't think it was much of
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a hit at the time Bobby Deerfield wasn't Then you go back to Dog Day Afternoon you know So it's a few films
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you know since he'd had a huge hit So he wasn't the draw I don't think at the
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time when this movie came out Right Right So we're going to jump about 20 minutes into the film in a sequence
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where Tony Montana Scarface is making a a drug buy Uh what do they call it yayo
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Right And this sequence is pretty amazing It's
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Oh yeah It's filmed in a in a little tiny apartment and there's tension as soon as Tony gets there And I think the
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one thing about this sequence that I I really really like is the ratcheting of
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of the tension especially when they introduce the chainsaw but then also the
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acting that Pacino does here especially with his eyes and especially when the
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chainsaw is being used The defiance Yes Yeah I mean there's never a point in the
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sequence even after they've chainsawed his buddy or his brother there's no
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sense from Tony that he's going to give Yeah that's right And that's I think
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that's really hard for an actor to convey without saying anything It's all in the eyes Mhm And the other thing I
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think about this sequence that's great is a lot of people talk about how violent it is but then also people are
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always asking for the the uh the unrated cut of this scene And Deama never
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filmed anything that showed the chainsaw That's right hitting the human body And
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people you know I mean it's funny I I got in a sort of a I corrected somebody on Reddit recently where I was like they
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were looking for the footage and I was like "The footage doesn't exist." And I found interviews with the Palama where he talks about it and he said "We never
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shot it and we never intended to show it." And for a filmmaker that didn't shy away from getting gruesome got gruesome
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in a different way with this sequence And it's it's one of those things where what you don't show your mind is going
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to make it so much worse than it was But you absolutely you do not see the chainsaw hitting the skin but you sure
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feel like you just did Yeah you know by all the different reaction shots and what or blood splashing up your face or
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you know you feel like you watch something horrific and you didn't see much at all Yeah And and the tail end of
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the sequence is really one of my favorite aspects of the sequence It's so when uh the you know help arrives and uh
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you know sort of save Tony And again this gets to the geography of the location and where everybody's existing
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with this within the scene There's a lot of people shooting guns and at no point do you lose track of who's who and where
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they are Mhm And then we even get this sort of Hitchcockian overhead shot where
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the guy with the chainsaw leaves the bathroom uh to escape And I instantly thought of
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psycho the overhead shot of Norman Bates and Psycho at the top of the stairs But
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yeah I think this sequence and then the next sequence we're going to talk about in Carito's way perfectly illustrate how
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you choreograph an action scene without confusing the viewer Yeah And and it's
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funny that overhead shot cuz there's the same shot in Kuda's way in the next you know he did it again But this scene for
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me is a masterpiece and it's a masterpiece of the movie And if you want to really nerd out and dig into it if
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you really look at it it's extra complicated because there's all the stuff outside on location and the stuff
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in the hotel is clearly in a studio Yeah Absolutely not on location and it fits
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perfectly So not only do you have all the complexities of the the crane shots
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outside of which he he got his money worth on that crane that day cuz there's tons of them Yeah But he's cutting
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towards another date another location you know pure studio you can tell And
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also found all these different ways It's the most boring set possible but he
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found so many vis like ways to make it visual from like when Bower's character
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comes in and and starts shooting just the way he shoots up and down the door and then pushes through and he shoots
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against you see him shooting the mirror you know which again helps with the geography but all these different visual
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flares of the most boring set possible just to he ratcheted up everything and
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it's such it's like one big long playable moment and he just cranks attention tension and every single
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second there's as much tension as there possibly could be You know it's exhausting when you're done watching the
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sequence because he just dialed it to 11 the whole time Yeah absolutely Let's jump ahead 10 years now
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to Carito's Way 1993 his 21st film and he was coming off Raising Kane And I'm
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just gonna get right out in front of this Brian and say that I think this sequence which is the sort of the pool
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room sequence is arguably the greatest sequence that the PAMA ever directed and
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it's from one of the greatest movies of the 1990s Absolutely It's interesting because the
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parallels between those scenes are Well look we'll get this They both take place
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about 20 minutes into the film Exactly But it's also him showing up for a drug buy Yeah That's a trap That's a trap You
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know it's And you know all the goes down It's the same scene Same you know
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ultimately but completely different shot Completely different Equally effective
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if not more effective the second time Yeah You know like he took everything you learned the first time and perfected
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it the second time Yeah But it's it's amazing cuz it's the same scene Like Yeah Watching them back to back really
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really illustrated that But again we get into the geography of the scene And the thing I really like about this sequence
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is again all the work that Pacino is doing cuz there's very little voice over
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He has a couple of of voiceover lines where he sort of sets the stage for things but then he's doing all this
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acting with his eyes where he notices immediately there's something going on in the bathroom and he he knows
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something's going on there and he pretty early on realizes that they're being set
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up and then he goes through the sequence of trying to figure out how to get out
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of it Yeah And you know he presents this magic pool shot he's going to do
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And goodness I mean this sequence we we could probably spend the next hour uh
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talking about it but I mean you have a great performance from John Ortiz And again uh the moments leading up to
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when goes down is another lesson in sort of uh you know sort of ramping up
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tension Like the difference between this scene and the last one is he walks in hesitantly He walks in
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unarmed you know he's just kind of along like a bystander almost on somebody else's deal As opposed to Scarface where
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he walked in you know as the the aggressor in it Yeah Uhhuh So he walks
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in he sees instantly something's wrong The kid he's with is completely oblivious that there's a problem Has no
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clue He's blinded But Carito picks it out within seconds He knows there's a
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problem but he doesn't have a gun They're completely outmanned and he has to try to figure out a way to get out of
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this and take some of them down which is hence the the uh the pool shot where he knew he lines it up perfectly He could
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take out two like that you know without a gun And uh yeah when you talk about
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again the Palma's brilliance in this scene like again the geography instantly
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you know where everybody is what's going on every shot every opportunity to dial
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in attention cuz you know as a viewer you're with Pacino you know instantly you see what he's done It's all entirely
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from Pacino's point of view But Depalman never cheapens it by doing a POV shot
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Yes Not once You know it's all his eyes He's looking around You see what he's looking at you can kind of read his mind
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but it's all done elegantly Yeah You know what I mean
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like it's a master class Like this is a scene that should be taught to every film school student in terms of how to
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because it's really complicated but seamless when you watch it Yeah You know
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what I mean you you follow it Yeah And the the cool thing I I like about this shot too and one thing I appreciate
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about about Deama is he's able to telegraph things in a way that makes the
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viewer feel smart but without being overt And I think a great example of
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this is when Caro asks the guy for a light for his cigarette And it's clearly
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to see if the guy has a gun Yep And he sees he has a gun And then he puts the next part of his plan together But I've
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said it before on this show I think the one thing I really like about Deama that I think a lot of other quote unquote
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arty filmmakers fall into is Deama isn't afraid to stay true to his sort of
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popcorn uh you know way of making films or that grindhouse aesthetic where it's okay to
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get down in the gutter and the problem has done that a lot But I I think that's a lot of artouse filmmakers for lack of
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a better word just aren't willing to go there or think it cheapens their product if they
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do go there Interesting Yeah Oh yeah He's not He doesn't hide his history but
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he takes these movies that under a lesser
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hand could be a movie of the week and he elevates them You know what I mean like
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a lot of his films they're not he's he makes art out of films
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that aren't necessarily that on the page Yeah put it that way you know Yeah
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absolutely So Brian this was a great discussion and I hope we can come on at some other point together and maybe do
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even a deeper dive on these sequences and these movies but I do want to uh give you a chance to talk about your
25:49
podcast So let people know about your podcast and where we can find it Sure
25:54
Although I'm a big movie nerd uh this is actually a music podcast It's called The Double Stop I started it 10 years ago
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and I did a 100 episodes They're all kind of extended long interviews
26:08
with musicians and producers mainly 80s bass 80s and 90s Um it's all kind of
26:15
guitar rock You know there's a lot of kind of hair metal stuff but a lot of Prague and Shred and all kinds of stuff
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So it's all kind of based around guitar rock And we'll go through the entire career of the person I talked to from
26:27
how they got into music all their albums you know and it's almost like the
26:33
attempt is kind of do like a an audio documentary of their life You get a real
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good sense when you in detail for an hour when they're talking about their whole career You get a good good sense of them So I did a bit over 100 episodes
26:45
and then I had another child and we kind of had to shut it down We moved from Vancouver over to Ontario and life got
26:52
crazy But now he's a little older and it's calmed down So I brought it back and I think I'm seven episodes in you
26:58
know kind of once every week or two there'll be a new one that comes out So it's called The Double Stop It's um on
27:04
all the usual audio podcast platforms and I also put it up on YouTube as well but it is strictly an audio podcast Yeah
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Excellent and and I'll include a link to that And um yeah before we go are there any kind of final thoughts you want to
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give about Deama his relationship with Pacino or these two movies
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i think these two movies really hold up well Scarface is crazy but you know
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there's a reason why it's a classic And Caruda's Way to me is just a masterpiece Like I think that's one of Bryant De
27:37
Palma's greatest achievements is that film you know Um it was an old book In
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fact I I have it here The old original book you know and then you know which
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which that was the original And then this is actually what the movie is is after hours What the movie was which is funny They they they couldn't use the
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name after hours because of the TV Yeah Exactly Like these were books they they'd come out a long time earlier
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They they did not sell well They were not hit books Um I think as I understand
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Pino came across it like he met the author Edwin Torres at a gym or something He was a judge He was a judge
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Yeah Yeah And he also wrote Q&A which also was made into another film with Nick Noli But um this is not these
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weren't books that were bestsellers and again Pacino read them and was like I want to do it and and got the team back
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together again But you know for a diverse filmmaker like DeAlma this has
28:34
got to at least be in the top three because he's done so many amazing movies It's not a film that it has become the
28:40
same modern classic as Scarface but my goodness people if you haven't seen it you got to check it out Yeah No it it I
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it's a hill I'll die on It Caro's Way is a better film than Scarface It not even debatable in my opinion And again it is
28:54
I mean depending on where you fall and what you dig there's probably two
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straight masterpieces that you can arguably say Dealma made Blowout being one of them Caro the other I think
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there's other masterpieces in his filmography Uh but those two are inarguable and I don't think you're
29:12
wrong choosing one over the other But yeah I if if if I achieve anything with this show Brian it's to give people a
29:19
greater appreciation of uh Dama as a filmmaker in general but also to how
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incredible the film Caro's Way is And uh Arrow Video recently put out a really
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really great 4K release of this film Universal had done a 4K release um a
29:37
couple years ago but this 4K release tightened things up a little bit gave a
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little bit of a better um presentation of the picture Uh and also it's just have has a a ton of great great extras
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So if you're on the 4K train definitely check out the Arrow video uh release of
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Carito's Way Brian this was great Hopefully we can sit down and chat again
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Oh I'd love to And until then thank you Thanks for having me on And uh yeah as
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as I mentioned before we came on uh I'm a massive fan of the Slycast I thought
30:12
you did a brilliant job on that show so I'm really happy to get a chance to talk to you Oh that's great I I love hearing that The the Slycast is one of my uh
30:20
proudest podcasting achievements Uh I'm really proud of the work we did on that show and the presentation we had doing
30:28
really really sort of long form discussions of Slice movies I'm kind of disappointed we
30:35
didn't get to some of them later in his career I would have loved to have talked about the the fourth Rambo movie Mhm But
30:42
man the the late 90s and early 2000s really really killed our momentum
30:47
That's Yeah they were a bit of a grind All right So we'll talk again soon Okay
30:53
Thanks a lot man
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